Visit Pluto! New Video Simulates Landing on Dwarf Planet

A new color movie combines more than 100 images taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during the probe's historic Pluto flyby in the summer of 2015. The video shows just what it might be like to hitch a ride on a lander approaching the dwarf planet's surface.

NASA unveiled the video Thursday (Jan. 19), the 11th anniversary of New Horizons' launch, in 2006.

"The video offers a trip down onto the surface of Pluto — starting with a distant view of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon — and leading up to an eventual ride in for a 'landing' on the shoreline of Pluto's informally named Sputnik Planitia," NASA officials wrote in a video description. [Check out more amazing Pluto photos]

New Horizons flew by Pluto and its five moons (Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx) on July 14, 2015, and was just 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) from the dwarf planet at the closest point of the encounter. The flyby was the highlight of a 9.5-year trek across the solar system, a trip that sent New Horizons on a journey of more than 3 billion miles (4.8 billion km).

"To create a movie that makes viewers feel as if they're diving into Pluto, mission scientists had to interpolate some of the panchromatic (black and white) frames based on what they know Pluto looks like, to make it as smooth and seamless as possible," NASA officials wrote in the description.

"Low-resolution color from the Ralph color camera aboard New Horizons was then draped over the frames to give the best available, actual color simulation of what it would look like to descend from high altitude to Pluto's surface."

New Horizons is now headed for a new target at the edge of the solar system. On Jan. 1, 2019, the spacecraft will fly by a distant Kuiper Belt object known as 2014 MU69.

Tariq joined Purch's Space.com team in 2001 as a staff writer, and later editor, covering human spaceflight, exploration and space science. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Google+, Twitter and on Facebook.